Lonely Ulrika: How lockdown’s lost me my new love
This month… Self-isolating since her daughter, Bo, 20, who suffers with a heart condition, was tested for Coronavirus, Ulrika Jonsson muses on how lockdown could be bad for a blossoming romance…
The year 2020 will forever be remembered for its many mantras. ‘We’re in it together’ is definitely at the top of the list. It’s one of those assertive, reassuring adages that is supposed to help us unite and give us confidence.
But this is, without doubt, the strangest time to be living in. If this was a film script it would, in my humble opinion, have lacked credibility and would categorically be one of those films I would never go to see. I don’t mind admitting that I spent the weeks running up to lockdown, and the first week of it, walking around thinking I was having an actual nightmare, and that soon someone would give me a good slap and I’d wake up. Alas, it turns out, I’m in that ghastly, dystopian movie – just like the rest of you.
There are so many aspects of this new normal to reference – too many, perhaps. Everyone’s situation is different, but unashamedly the same. Everyone’s suffering is relative – and whoever you are and wherever you are, we are all feeling it.
But as for us all being in it ‘together’, I beg to differ. We’re in it together but apart. And that is something I’m struggling with. Granted, I have three of my children around me. But friends, extended family and other loved ones are absent. There are many freedoms we have been denied, but the most basic one is human touch, human contact, human interaction. It’s one I rely on daily. I’m a very physical person – I love touching people; hugging, embracing. I think it
speaks louder than words and it offers a reassurance like no other because it breaks down barriers – invisible and physical ones.
I’ve almost stopped hugging my children because I’ve got a chip in my brain telling me to avoid physical contact. Having spent the past two years coming out of a somewhat ‘barren’ marriage with little human touch, I have then spent the past five months motoring along in a physical relationship with a new man – so you might see the confusion my brain and body is suffering.
It took a lot to get my inner sexual engine started up again – only for Coronavirus to take away the petrol and dump me in an isolated garage on the edge of Nowhere. I know you might argue that missing intimacy, touch, love and affection, is way down the list of needs and musts right now – and I hear you. But it took a long time to reprogramme my dormant brain to wake up and give and receive affection. And now I’m trying to do the reverse. And you know what they say about old dogs…
So, instead, my new approach is looking forward to ‘dating’ again – whenever that may be. I’m trying my hardest to remember what it feels like. At the same time as wonder whether I’ll actually be a virgin again by the time this is all over.
Sending you all so much love.